The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Charlie Kirk's assassination points to a democracy in trouble and a debate about Israel's strike in Qatar

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. Rudyard and Janice discuss the social and political fallout from right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk's assassination. What does the country's online reaction reveal about the state of American culture and democracy? We are living in a climate of heated language which is becoming more and more violent. All signs point to a democracy in trouble. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to Israel's strike this week on Hamas officials in Qatar. Janice argues that the attack was a massive misstep damaging the credibility of Trump who had given his word to Qatar that they would be protected. Netanyahu approved this strike against the advice of his senior military team, knowing it would infuriate his last and most supportive ally, Donald Trump. Rudyard disagrees with Janice's take, making the case that Israel had every right to strike Hamas in Doha. Why is Qatar - one of the largest funders of terrorism in the world, including Hamas - not a legitimate target?  And finally, how does this week's events affect the plight of the remaining Israeli hostages? To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 12th of September. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, chair of the Monk Debates, joined in studio by Janice Gross. And Janice, great to be in conversation with you today. I'm great to be here in the studio with you, Rachel. Absolutely. And we are making, again, all these podcasts, if you're listening, available as full-length

videos for our paid donors. And if you're not a paid donor, you want to check out the first half of the show on YouTube. Head over to our YouTube channel over 85,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is just great and tens of thousands of downloads each week. A consequential week, Jen, is so much that we could talk about, but I think we've decided on two topics. And the first really has to be the killing of American conservative organizer, podcaster, media personality, Charlie Kirk. Maybe not so much the event itself, which has now been well covered over the last 72 hours, but the fallout. and what you've seen and heard since then as a political scientist looking at the United States,

what is this reveal about the state of American culture and society and democracy in the aftermath of this tragic event? It's very concerning. In the immediate wake of his murder, there were from what I would call mainstream organizations, both on the right, And on the left, there were condemnations of violence and the damage and the danger of violence. But move out of that into the Twitter sphere, a firestorm, frankly. And where it starts, it doesn't really matter. There was a firestorm. There were tweets about vengeance and what those who would define themselves as sympathetic.

to him would do, and there were those on the left who said, you know, overdue, long time coming. And really what it is, it's a glorification of violence. If you're looking for data on this, there is a long-time student Robert Papin, the United States, who said yesterday that he's been monitoring violent language in American politics since January the sixth. And this is the peak that he's seen of, frankly, threats of violence. There's a smell about this, Richard. It's, you know, your spidey sense, my sputty sense. We're at an increasingly dangerous time. Yeah. Let's try to pair some things off from each other. Because America has a gun violence problem. There were multiple school shootings this week. To what extent is there a potential

risk for an analysis here to conflate Charlie Kirk's political activism and his kind of adjacency to the Trump presidency with an attack that seems to have a lot of the elements of a traditional shooter, shooter event in the United States, a high-powered rifle, a high-powered rifle, seemingly, we don't know quite yet, but like it looks like possibly a male suspect, someone who once again, like the Butler Pennsylvania assassination attempt on the president's life, you know, involved clearly some planning and a, you know, a desire to wreak vengeance on what would be seen as a, as a political opponent or someone that the shooter feels is a threat probably to America and our collective way of life. I guess what I'm trying to get at is, are we right to look at these

things as political events or should we be looking them as kind of sociological events? Because there is a difference. I think of assassinations like the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I think that was in Bosnia. It was. You know, that clearly to me is a political assassination. It was a young radical who was opposed to the Austrian Empire's occupation of what is present-day Yugoslavia. And a prince, I believe, was his name. And he, you know, along with a bunch of other students, attempted to kill and succeeded in killing the archedriced. ultimately was a big role in triggering World War I, but there's category differences here,

aren't there? There are category differences. We can make a difference between people and who knows, right? Who knows because – but the argument is anyway that in a climate of heated violence with heated rhetoric, people who are predisposed to mental health challenges – get triggered. Get triggered. That's exactly the argument. So to me, it's the first part of the argument that matters, that we have a climate of heated, of language that is becoming more and more violent.

And that's when you begin to see this. Look back over the last year, Richard, there are other political figures who've been targeted. You know, Pritzker, others, Shapiro, and the governors who have been target. Who knows what the motivation is. it could be sociological, but that sociological trend itself only occurs when you have just an environment full. And that's what the last two days were a few. I'm not a Twitter user. I left Twitter in protest. I don't use it, but I did look when this happened. It's, I mean, it is wreaking with violence on all sides. Yeah, maybe one way to look at it is upstress.

and downstream. Yes. Upstream of these events, probably there is mental illness. There are, you know, sociological factors, as you say, like a sense of us versus them, the polarization that we discussed. But then downstream, and I think that's why I would side with on this event that it is more of a political assassination. Because regardless of whatever this, the killer, who he is and what his manifesto may or may not be,

what we've seen in the last 48 hours downstream of the event is a highly politicized and charged event with two sides, the MAGA movement and elements in that facing off against what you might call capital P progressives and both sides to greater or lesser extent, but some I would say to a greater extent kind of losing it. Losing a sense that I think this is what worries me is that that people seem unconstrained by their own tribe or group in saying things that just should never be said. And I guess it's what I find concerning about this moment is that it's exposed the lack of kind of limiting norms on a lot of behavior within the tribes. I'm past the point of expecting the tribes to behave well with each other. Don't give up on that. Let's forget about that. I'm just simply saying that if you're in one

tribe and you think you can say Charlie Kirk, you know, deserve this. He, you know, he think, you know, he, thank God he's dead. You know, these kinds of statements would just seem to be canceling of somebody, regardless of what tribe you belong to or where, you know, your political orientations are, we don't say these things because they're disgusting. No, that's right. And I, you know, let's go a little step further and push the envelope just a little bit. So, he, you know, who have any kind of public responsibilities, right? Whether it's editorial writers or journalists or teachers or anybody, so it's not only, as it often is on Twitter, about yourself, but you have responsibilities to others.

There's an obligation, right, to model what is fundamentally just decent behavior. Strip away this whole story, somebody took a gun and killed. somebody else that was sitting in a tent and regardless of what their political views were, that's just not okay in any world to do that. And if you don't start there, we're in deep trouble, we're in deep trouble. As we get to the end of this first segment of the show, just to again draw on your kind of experience as a political scientist, I felt there are elements of this killing that worry me also in the context of we look at failing states. I would say just go south of the border to Mexico, where we've seen a horrible rash of killings

and violence now for really for decades, but intensifying as the cartels have continued to strangle the country and politicians and activists have come under threat and death. It's different in the United States. We don't have drug cartels. We don't have militias like in the Sudan. but there's something about a shift, it's change. This doesn't seem like the behavior of a kind of first world democracy. It seems as if it is the behavior of a society that is racked, one by violence,

two by divisions, and three by some kind of, again, tolerance or permission. for people to either act or I would say even worse, fantasize about these things. And kind of, you know, I was biking home yesterday from our studios here in downtown Toronto through the University of Toronto campus. This is nothing to do with UFT, but I saw a poster by the, you know, the Canadian Communist Party, which had a picture of the young man who brutally murdered the health care executive in the United States, cowardly shooting him from behind. And here's this poster with this, you know, picture of the chiseled-faced, you know,

young assassin, you know, saying, in effect, you know, we're all communists now. This is in Canada. This is at, you know, St. George and Harvard Street. And I guess that, you know, and then ten-x that to the United States. And you just start thinking, where the hell is the Enlightenment? Like, where's the last 200 years of reason? and agency and individual. Discipline, self-discipline.

Yes. And a sense of a larger responsibility, right? So that is an implicit. That's a dog whistle to violence. It is. And you and I were- Is it a hate crime? I don't know.

I mean, to me it's verging on something. Yeah. Well, the courts will, you know, even the, you know, and again, the courts play a different role in Canada. And I always remind people of this, we have hate laws. The United States does not.

And so the debate is completely different. But let's talk for a minute about the president. I mean, this is a close friend of the president. The president has argued that he was one of the most influential people in getting him elected. So you would expect to see a grieving president. I wouldn't say that Donald Trump's behavior is the kind of above-the-free minister. That's what you're looking for. Minister to the country at a time when a reprehensible act was committed.

That's not the role the president is playing, frankly. That's part of the law. Your right to point, you know, to put your finger on the pulse. This is a democracy in trouble. Yeah, yeah. And we just hope again that they're not reprisals. If you inflame enough, Rudyard, people. who have a predisposition, as you just said, get triggered.

And that's why there's a responsibility on everybody not to inflame. Yeah. I guess what's worrying, though, is going beyond simply the mentally ill who are triggered to a new step and stage, you know, a waterfall or a cascade, where people like Princep in Bosnia or whatever in 1914 are acting solely. out of political motives and are in a sense just openly bringing violence and the threat and the reality of assassination and death to the public square. I sense we're not there yet, but the Kirk assassination is to me as the closest we've seen America get to that. Yeah. And you're right also to talk about

waves. We know this comes in waves. Right. One happens. It encourages others. And there's cyclical. That's why they're so dangerous unless there is across the board condemnation of murder. Let's call this what it is. It's murder. It is a criminal act. Well, Janice, we're going to say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers and join our monk donors on the other side of this short break. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast to get full-length editions of each and every episode. of this program. Simply go to our website, www. The Monk Debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site.

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